The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon (52 page)

Several yards downstream, Parmenter himself was clinging to the side of a boulder.

Just below him, two or three others crouched in the shallows, gasping for breath.

These people were clearly in distress, and one or two of them were waving for Stratton to pull over and render assistance, but he ignored them all and blew past, making a beeline for the middle of the river.

Suzanne Jordan, the guide who had delivered the news about the accident, had already promised that she and her crew would retrieve his stranded passengers. Stratton’s only concern was thus the people who had failed to make their way to the shoreline—many of whom, he knew, were exhausted and fighting for their lives.

His job was to chase those people down and get them out of the water before they drowned.

B
y now, Lin Sultzer, who had been pulled down so deep that she didn’t think she was coming back up, had popped to the surface and found herself in the middle of the river, racing downstream toward the next rapid.

As she fought to keep her head above the water, Sultzer noted that a plastic cooler in which most of their lunch supplies had been stored was drifting past. Bobbing in the water all around the cooler were dozens of oranges, and one of Sultzer’s fellow passengers was treading water and frantically snatching them up. He tucked one beneath his chin, then seized another and offered it to her.

“What am I going to do with that?” she exclaimed.

“You might need something to eat,” he replied.

Concluding that the man was in shock, Sultzer told him to forget about collecting fruit and focus on getting himself to shore.

As he paddled off, Sultzer spotted Mary Ann McNammee just a few feet away. Sultzer’s relief at seeing that McNammee was alive vanished as she registered the expression on her friend’s face.

“Are you okay?” Sultzer called out.

“Linny,
I think my legs are broken!” cried McNammee.

“Well,” replied Sultzer, doing her best to remain calm,
“let’s see if we can get you to shore.”

The two women clasped hands so that Sultzer could begin pulling McNammee toward the rocks. But their wet skin was slippery and both women were being jostled violently. Amid the thrashing waves, they lost their grip and were separated.

As McNammee was torn from her grasp, Sultzer turned to see what lay ahead and spotted a large, misshapen silver-and-gray object drifting in the center of the river. This, she realized, was the middle section of their destroyed raft, floating upside down. Several passengers were clinging to the side of the boat, and Darrel Roberson, who had somehow climbed onto the bottom, was trying to haul them out of the water.

When Roberson spied Sultzer, he motioned for her to swim toward him, but she was too far away and, to her dismay, was carried downstream. As she was swept past the boat, she yelled out to Roberson,
“Mary Ann’s behind me. Try and get her—she’s hurt!”

Then, to Sultzer’s surprise, something even stranger than the oranges floated past. She realized that it was a box of cheap white wine—Chablis—merrily sailing downstream.

At that moment Sultzer, a recovering alcoholic, decided to make a deal with God. “If you get me out of this,” she promised,
“I will never take another drink for as long as I live.”
^I

A
s Sultzer fought for her life, Dave Stratton was trying his best to save another one. He and his rescue team had by now been swept below Tuna Creek Rapid, which was a mile downstream from Crystal. Directly ahead, they could see that one of Parmenter’s passengers was floating faceup in his life jacket, with his arms outstretched.

“He doesn’t look very good,” Stratton remarked to himself, an impression that was strengthened as the raft drew closer.

When Stratton pulled alongside, one of his swampers tied a ring buoy onto the bowline and leaped into the water. With help from Scott Gallaher and Bob Paparelli, the swamper was able to hoist the passenger over the side tubes and onto the deck of the raft.

It was Bill Wert.

His skin looked slightly blue, he did not appear to be breathing, and when Gallaher turned him over onto his back and started searching for a pulse, there was none.

“Let’s get him some CPR,” barked Stratton from his position at the tiller.

As Gallaher and the second swamper removed Wert’s life jacket and pulled up his shirt, they were shocked to see a massive bruise on the sixty-two-year-old man’s chest. An ugly purple splotch, roughly the size of a fist, covered his sternum. During the flip, Wert had apparently sustained a blow from something heavy, most probably one of the metal storage boxes in the center of Parmenter’s rig.

Now came an ugly moment. Whatever damage the blow had already inflicted was about to be exacerbated by the CPR treatment, which would have to be administered directly on top of the bruise.

Grimly, they set to work. Placing both fists on Wert’s sternum, the swamper began counting out a series of five compressions, carefully spaced at two-second intervals. Then he paused while Gallaher, who was kneeling next to Wert’s head, tilted the older man’s chin upward and administered a pair of rescue breaths directly into his mouth.

On the second breath, Wert’s chest convulsed and a surge of river water mixed with mucus came vomiting out of his throat and directly into Gallaher’s mouth. Torn between the desire to revive Wert and his disgust at what had just happened,
Gallaher turned his head to the side and spat.

While the two men continued their efforts, Stratton kept moving downstream, with Paparelli serving as a lookout, scanning the river for swimmers. The CPR continued for several minutes until the swamper paused, turned to Stratton, and said,
“I just don’t think this guy is going to make it. I don’t think we can get him back around.”

Stratton now faced the kind of decision that no river guide ever hopes to confront. Other survivors needed to be pulled from the water—and directly ahead were Roberson and a group of stricken passengers, including McNammee, who urgently needed help.

The choice was clear. Stratton ordered his team to leave Wert curled in the corner of the raft and turn to the work of getting those who were still alive on board.

A
t
10:36 a.m., an orange-and-white Park Service helicopter lifted off from the heliport on the South Rim. Minutes earlier, a rafting party on the river had sent out a Mayday, which was picked up by a sightseeing aircraft passing directly over the canyon, radioed to the control tower at Grand Canyon airport, then relayed to the park’s emergency dispatch center.
On board Helo 210 were a pilot named Mike Bertoldi and Curt Sauer, the river boss who had rejected Grua’s speed-run permit application eight days earlier.

Less than ten minutes after takeoff, while they were still en route, Sauer received a more detailed report from his dispatchers. A motor rig had flipped in Crystal and twenty people were in the water. As they clattered upstream, Sauer caught sight of Parmenter’s overturned raft with Roberson and several passengers huddled on the bottom. A short distance beyond the wreck, he spotted the second boat, with Stratton at the helm, snatching up survivors from the river. As Bertoldi continued flying upstream, Sauer counted five people clinging to the rocks at water level.

When Helo 210 reached Crystal, Bertoldi touched down briefly and Sauer climbed out to speak with a group of oar-raft guides, who described what had happened and assured the ranger that they would retrieve the passengers stranded on the rocks. Then Sauer strapped back in and told Bertoldi to head downstream. During their second pass over the scene, Sauer could see that at least two of the stranded passengers were suffering from head injuries.

By now it was evident that one helicopter would not be sufficient to cope with the multiple emergencies.
Sauer radioed the South Rim to request that a second copter, Helo 210A, be mobilized with two rangers equipped with rescue-swimmer gear and a full emergency medical kit.

Then he noticed that one of the stranded passengers on the right side of the river had climbed halfway up a steep cliff and appeared to be stuck. Realizing that the man was now beyond the reach of a boat, Sauer sent out a request for a third chopper, Helo 210B, with a ranger and a length of climbing rope.

When the rescues were complete, Sauer told his dispatcher, the three helicopters would converge at Bass Camp, ten miles downstream from Crystal. All evacuations would take place from there.

D
ave Stratton had now finally managed to catch up with Roberson’s upside-down raft and transfer everyone to his own rig. As Scott Gallaher and Bob Paparelli pulled people aboard, they were shocked by some of the injuries.
There were many lacerations and several broken bones. Most of these people were also in shock, and some were exhibiting signs of hypothermia, having spent more than twenty minutes
immersed in the fifty-degree water. One man, who had a deep cut on his leg, was shaking so violently that Stratton ordered one of the swampers to break into the duffels, pull out some sheets and blankets, and wrap him up. But the worst case, by far, was Mary Ann McNammee.

Contrary to what McNammee had thought when she was floating in the river, her legs were not broken. But the back of her left calf had been struck by a sharp piece of metal when her raft flipped, and as Stratton’s team transferred her over from the wreckage of Parmenter’s boat, they could see that her leg had been flayed all the way from the back of her knee to her Achilles tendon. The flap of skin, which was attached only by a narrow strip of tissue, was as white as the belly of a fish, and the muscles underneath her calf were fully exposed.

While his team tended to the injuries, Stratton chased downriver after Sultzer, who was among the last of the passengers still in the water. When the raft finally caught up to her, one of the men tossed out a rope and they heaved her out of the water and into the raft like a marlin.

As Sultzer struggled to her feet, she accidentally stumbled over Bill Wert’s body. He was curled into a fetal position, and her first thought was that he had fallen asleep. But when one of the swampers gently covered him with a tarp, she realized he was dead.

With all of the swimmers now rescued, Stratton and his team turned to deal with McNammee.